Who do you think is more likely to be able to provide an accurate description of what a scientific theory is: your sixth-grade teacher, or Karl Popper?
What Makes A Theory Scientific?"Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves." - physicist Richard Feynman
The big question about a theory is whether it's right or wrong.
Unfortunately, it's impossible to know that a scientific theory is right. The theory may agree beautifully with all the evidence - today. But science isn't like mathematics. There can be no guarantee about what evidence we will discover tomorrow.
So, we go for the next best thing, which is proving theories wrong. That's easy. You just find some evidence that contradicts what the theory says. The theory is then falsified and stays that way.
So, a scientific theory is one which can in principle be falsified. The theory has to make strong statements about evidence. If the statements aren't strong, then the theory fits any evidence, and is unfalsifiable. That's bad.
It's bad for three very practical reasons. First, a theory which can't make predictions is a dead end. Second, it would be useless. Oil companies are very pleased that geologists can predict where to drill for oil. And third, if we have two rival theories, we want to use evidence to choose between them. If they are unfalsifiable, then evidence doesn't do that for us.
While no number of observations in conformity with the hypothesis that, say, all planets have elliptical orbits can show that the hypothesis is true or even that tomorrow's planet will have an elliptical orbit, only one observation of a non-elliptical planetary orbit will refute the hypothesis. Falsification can get a grip where positive proof is ever beyond us; the demarcation between science and non-science lies in the manner in which scientific theories make testable predictions and are given up when they fail their tests. http://www.xrefer.com/entry/553218
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994)source: http://www.geocities.com/healthbase/falsification.htmlThe most important philosopher of science since Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Sir Karl Popper finally solved the puzzle of scientific method, which in practice had never seemed to conform to the principles or logic described by Bacon. Instead of scientific knowledge being discovered and verified by way of inductive generalizations, leaping from data into blank minds, in terms that go back to Aristotle, Popper realized that science advances instead by deductive falsification through a process of "conjectures and refutations." http://www.friesian.com/popper.htm
Notice that NOWHERE in Popper's comments on scientific theories does he use the word "EXPERIMENT". He uses the words "falsifiability" and "testability," and throughout his writings refers to scientific theories that are capable of refutation by OBSERVATION.
I trust this puts an end to you mistaken belief that theories that do not involve experimental reproduction of the phenomona within theire scope are somehow not "scientific."
Kinda reminds me of my tagline.
testable = experiment.